Multi-word collocation extraction by syntactic composition of collocation bigrams

This paper presents a method of multi-word collocation extraction, which is based on the syntactic composition of two-word collocations previously identified in text. We describe a procedure of word linking that iteratively builds up longer expressions, which constitute multi-word collocation candidates. We then present several measures used for candidates ranking according to the collocational strength, and show the results of a trigram extraction experiment. The methodology used is particularly suited for the extraction of flexible collocations, which can undergo complex syntactical transformations such as passivization, relativization and dislocation.